Communications system networks employ various protocol levels, including encapsulation protocols. The OSI model includes seven independent protocol layers, introduced in further detail below. Generic Stream Encapsulation (GSE) provides a data link layer protocol, which facilitates the transmission of data from packet oriented protocols (e.g., Internet protocol or IP) on top of a unidirectional physical layer protocol (e.g., DVB-S2, DVB-T2 and DVB-C2). With regard to such encapsulation protocols, network terminal nodes must decode or de-encapsulate such data packets to determine which data packets are intended of destined for that particular terminal. Accordingly, in typical systems, a software filter is implemented in each terminal node, which is configured to process the header information of each and every packet to determine the particular packets that are destined for that terminal. In view of the fact that a system may include a large number of terminal nodes (many tens or hundreds of thousands, or even millions), and a substantial amount of data traffic traverses such networks, any given terminal node would be burdened with the processing of a substantial number of data packets not even destined for that terminal. Accordingly, this burden of processing such a large volume of data packets via a software filter results in a significant amount of wasted processing power and bandwidth usage, as well as significant unnecessary time delays.
What is needed, therefore, are systems and methods for performing an initial high-speed, low complexity pre-processing of received data packets to reduce the processing burdens of the customary software packet filters of terminal node receivers.